
Prouza
1959 - Czech Republic
Contemporaries
Since the age of eight, Ota Prouza has lived in a home for people with disabilities. He has no vocational training, and his literacy is severely limited. His childhood and family memories are fragmented. He carefully preserves two photographs, as if they were the only fixed points in his life: one of his mother and the other of himself as a child. These relics represent a fragile thread connecting his own identity to the inner turmoil caused by his intellectual disability. Lost both within himself and in the world around him, he sits at his desk and creates, in his own way, drawings on long, roughly glued strips of paper.
He satisfies his desire to explore the unknown by drawing imaginary journeys and modes of transportation on pieces of paper, which he gradually glues together into strips that can reach 12 meters in length. On these strips, he explores the bustle of megacities, always drawn from a bird's-eye view. The trucks and trams seem to be engaged in a dance, and the buildings tower above them like dark chimneys reaching for the clouds. It's a constant journey through a landscape devoid of people, a landscape exclusively dedicated to skyscrapers and transportation.
Ota Prouza enriches our understanding and perception of this world so profoundly that we, too, yearn to travel through these ethereal cities. Ota Prouza has a visual impairment and likely sees the world through a fog, making the detail with which he crafts his megalopolises all the more incredible.
Someone asked at the exhibition's opening, "Ota, is this how you see the world?" He didn't hesitate for a second and replied, "No, this is it!!!"

